


Pyres of Melancholy

by BlackBirdAolen



Category: Final Fantasy X, Final Fantasy XIII, Final Fantasy XIII Series
Genre: Crossover, Farplane, Gen, Mingling Worlds, Pyreflies, Sending, Spira, Worlds Crossing, alternative universe, sin - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-23
Updated: 2015-05-23
Packaged: 2018-03-31 22:04:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3994588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlackBirdAolen/pseuds/BlackBirdAolen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cid finds himself in Spira, after he became a l'Cie. He encounters summoner Yuna and her entourage of Guardians, and more than once is shown that, even though Spira seems to be centered on death, it still holds many precious places and moments for everyone wandering its soil.</p><p> </p><p>  <a href="http://ask.fm/BlackBirdAolen">Got a fanfic idea for me?</a><br/><a href="http://cheroshseiphar.deviantart.com/">My deviantART - full of original fiction.</a><br/><a href="http://blackbirdaolen.tumblr.com/">Snippets and ramblings on my tumblr.</a></p>
            </blockquote>





	Pyres of Melancholy

Cid Raines had been sceptical at first about the prospects of traveling to an unknown part of an unfamiliar world. It held the beauty of the world guided by the crystals. The world he knew. A chain of strange events, however, had led him to this place, and it was most bewildering to him. A world where water seemed to be the element most prominent, and where travelling by boat and steam-powered ships was the natural way of handling everything. And still, it made Cid feel a bit out of place, as though he wasn’t supposed to be here.

What was even more impressing about this world, however, was its culture, and the way that the people seemed to resent any machinery, which they called machina. Machina, the unsettling behemoths of the seas and skies, it seemed. Cid couldn’t help but chuckle any time he heard the people talk about them, and about a people unafraid of working and living with those very machines resented by the majority of the population.

But it was also a world where death reigned supreme. Cid had seen it time and again, as he had wandered along the green hills and harsh mountains to discover more about Spira. People lived in fear of an entity named Sin, an enormous fiend, as Cid had understood it. He was not entirely sure what to think of that, and in the months he wandered Spira, he never encountered the beast itself, but he did encounter the trails of destruction left behind by the beast’s mere presence. He saw the monsters spawned from Sin’s being, he saw the tears of the many who lost their loved ones to the destruction hailing from the skies whenever Sin or its spawn approached. It was an ever-present threat, and now and then, Cid found himself cornered by the sheer masses of fiends that followed Sin on its heels. If he wouldn’t have been l’Cie, he would have soon found himself dead.

And still, there was something inside of him that told him that this could not be the natural course. Cid always had resented traditions and “facts” that were never changed simply because the people had grown so used to them. And the more he learned about Spira’s history, about the summoners, and about the Calm that was brought about by the highest, most respected summoners, in exchange for their lives, the more he found his intentions growing to change something about the course of things.

That was when he met Yuna and her group of guardians.

As Cid understood it, Yuna was the daughter of one particularly revered summoner, and she had set her sights on becoming the next summoner to defeat Sin. The mere thought sent a jolt of pain through Cid’s heart. This young girl looked promising, like she had something more to give to the world than ending her life in the senseless final summoning to calm Sin for a couple more years, for some time that no one would have to be afraid any longer. And while it sounded compelling that she wasn’t to do this for naught, it still angered and saddened Cid all the same.

Her guardians seemed to not quite accept this fate either. Especially Tidus and Rikku, as they were introduced to him, appeared to Cid as though they would do anything to keep that kind of fate away from Yuna. Cid pondered if he should join the entourage under some kind of pretence of becoming another guardian, but seeing that Yuna’s entourage was already of considerable size, Cid reconsidered. He could also just make his way along the route of pilgrimage pointed out by Yuna, since he apparently seemed like another summoner. It was true that Cid had achieved some strange things with his powers granted by the brand of the Fal’Cie taking on new properties, but it still was a strange thing to think.

But an encounter of unusual circumstances really stunned Cid. It always had seemed to him that the summoners fulfilled only this one role of summoning the Aeons (or Eidolon, or Esper, or however they were called), but that was as far from the truth as it could get. In fact, there was a lot more to it than just the summoning of powerful creatures.

It was the first time that he stayed behind after every single body had been carefully retrieved from a devastated part of a larger city, and placed in the sea nearby in floating caskets, or what exactly those were. Yuna seemed to be very set on doing something, which puzzled Cid a bit. He had thought that a sort of priesthood was responsible for taking care of the dead, but there was no sign that something like that existed. And it seemed that everyone was expecting that Yuna would take care of the souls of the deceased.

Cid was then the first time present at the ritual of the sending. The sending of the souls of the dead to the Farplane, as he learned the place beyond life was named. It was a most impressive sight to see Yuna step onto the water (a feat which already baffled Cid beyond words), and then proceeded to perform the sending. A dance, accompanied by the hymn the Fayth, a sort of revered pantheon of beings which seemed to be present throughout Spira. They were not Aeons, as Cid had understood it, but they still were a basis of power for the summoned beings.

The pyreflies rising into the skies above gave Cid a feeling of melancholy and loneliness, but also of great relief. At least those sent off to the Farplane would not come back to haunt their loved ones for still being alive. Cid adjusted his clothes, sighing quietly to himself. Maybe, despite being foreign to this world and unsure of what his path here would look like, he should pursue the possibility of going on some sort of pilgrimage himself. And, who knew, maybe he could still turn out to be of use for the people around him. It would be a great opportunity to repay the kindness he had encountered so far.


End file.
